A variety of IR detector structures can be fabricated from HgCdTe. One of these detector types is the Metal-Insulator-Semiconductor (MIS). With the MIS detector, a voltage is applied to the insulated gate such that majority carriers are depleted from the area immediately under the gate. Photo-generated minority signal carriers are then collected in the depleted region and read out. The gate level is typically metal and if front-side illumination is desired the metal is kept very thin (&lt;100 angstroms). The very thin metal is difficult to deposit uniformly especially over stepped regions. Also the gate is much too thin to be used for self-aligned implants, if self-aligned implants prove to be useful.